Alcohol and health anxiety
 

Hi all,

Going on two months of sobriety from alcohol. It's been an interesting ride thus far. Since quitting the booze, my health anxiety has been through the roof. My Dr.'s probably think i'm a nut because of all the testing they've done on me.

The final straw for my decision to quit was when i started getting crazy muscle spasms/twitches in my inner thigh. I thought to myself, well that's probably my body telling me to quit, so i did. Since that time i've had muscle cramps,spasms, weird sensations all over my body. Naturally, i went to google looking for answers. After getting my fair share of Dr. Google diagnosis's, i was in full health anxiety mode. I thought (still kinda do), i had every neurological disease/syndrome in the book.

In two months i've had multiple MRI's (all clean) and have seen a couple of PCP and Neurology Dr.s. While i'm still working with Neurology to find the root-cause, I wonder how much of my symptoms are caused by anxiety or maybe my body is just trying to recover from the alcohol.

Has anyone else had their anxiety give them chronic physical symptoms?

I wish our brains realized that we aren't cavemen and woman anymore. There is no sabertooth to run from. That the fight or flight response doesn't have to ride shotgun...

Well I certainly relate.......I quit for 6 months last year. In the first 2 months I saw 4 different consultants, who found nothing much wrong with me. I had muscle cramps, numbness, pain (could be anywhere), vertigo, headaches, shortness of breath, racing heart.....and more. It didn't feel like 'just' anxiety and I didn't feel anxious when the symptoms would strike. It all eased up between 90-100 days sober. You are doing the right thing....getting the symptoms checked. For me though I think t was a combination of my body recovering from its 'adaptation' to heavy drinking compounded by anxiety that I was surely going to die.
It is horrible, but take heart it gets better.

Thank you for the input! I sure hope it does get better!

I have had no physical symptoms from my GAD, but plenty in my head.

But I have successfully managed my GAD with meds for 19 years now.

Yes! I'm not a recovering alcoholic, I don't drink, but I've dealt with anxiety my whole life. My earliest memories are of being scared and anxious. So for 48 years, I've suffered with anxiety. Mainly over health. Absolutely you can get odd feelings, pain, weird sensations, you name it. I had a lot of testing done for a lower abdominal pain that was getting worse. Colonoscopy, MRI, blood tests etc. Once all the testing came back fine, that pain went away. You can have odd symptoms or pain, then you figure out what it is, breathe a sigh of relief, then your mind makes up something else! Its frustrating! I'd say you are completely normal, and as you get further into your journey it will probably disappear.

I have MAJOR health anxiety and am on anti depressants for it and I can CATERGORICALLY tell you that real symptoms have happened to me every single day for the past 20 or so years and I’m only 25. Those muscle spasms/twitches you have I have every single day. Last year before I got pregnant I had a really bad bout of them, so bad that they were everywhere, violently, all over my body. I was convinced I had motor neurone disease. Once I gave the twitches less importance they gradually subsided. This took months if not a year and I’ve still got a few now and again now!! Please don’t worry it’s your muscles misfiring because you’re so uptight ... I’m the same! And have used alcohol as a crutch for the past 7 years, in the evenings nearly every evening (apart from when I was pregnant) to block it all out however the BEST i ever felt was when I was pregnant because I didn’t touch alcohol and eventually my anxiety got better. I have written MANY posts on Patient, No more panic etc about these twitches haha 😂 so please don’t even about them even if you think ‘but say if I am the one that HAS GOT something wrong and it’s not anxiety this time’ haha thats the voice in every health anxiety sufferers minds x

I started getting concerned about those leg twitches last week.

Based on my research - on Google, of course - I narrowed the problem down to either ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease) or low potassium.

I ate a few bananas and they went away.

So one of my answers was on the money apparently.